by Samuel Holt
“Sorry to make trouble,” I said, put my sunglasses back on, and shifted into reverse.
“That’s okay, Mr. Holt. And listen—”
I shifted into park, and listened.
“We’re keeping it quiet,” he said, “to keep the civilians out.”
“Uh-huh.”
He leaned down, putting both hands on the windowsill. “It’s that Arab church,” he told me confidentially. “The mosque they just built.”
I remembered my lawyer Oscar Cooperman saying something about a new mosque, and he representing a supplier for it. I said, “Why such total security for a church?”
“They’ve had some threats, I guess,” he said. “About a month ago, when they were still building it, some guys tried to get in with a truck supposed to be filled full of Sheetrock; it was full of dynamite instead. Suicide mission, gonna blow up everybody and themselves along with it.”
‘‘Good God. Who were they?”
‘‘I dunno. Some other Arabs. They get tough when they’re mad at each other.” He grinned a bit crookedly. ‘‘When we see a car we don’t know,” he said, ‘‘we get a little antsy.”
‘‘I guess so. Sorry to shake you up,” I said. “I’ll take the dogs for a run somewhere else.”
“Good idea,” he agreed, and with that lack of irony that I’ll never entirely get used to in California, “Have a nice day,” he said.
36
Well, now I knew where the lightning was supposed to strike.
Ross Ferguson’s property was on the east side of his street. Up at the next intersection to the north I’d turned right, eastward, into that dead-end road, with the golden dome at the far end of it. Somewhere back up in those scrub woods on the hills there would be an invisible line separating Ross’s property from the land belonging to the mosque.
Barq Pool Service; lightning in Arabic. And an effort had been made a month ago to destroy that mosque with a suicidal truck bomb. Oscar Cooperman had told me how tight the security had been during the mosque’s construction.
This was what Hassan Tabari had been referring to on the plane, the incredible polarization between the fundamentalists and the modernists in the Arab world, with the terrorists and the fanatics here and there in control, with oil money to pay for their adventures.
Oil money to pay for setting Ross Ferguson up. Delia West thrown away as casually as any of the innocent bystanders they’d taken with them over the years. Official or semi-official support and expertise from fundamentalist governments, using spies and secret police well-trained by either the United States or Russia. All the time in the world to make their preparations, money no object and humanity nonexistent.
Who was coming to the opening day ceremonies that the lightning people planned to kidnap? A religious figure? A political figure? There was oil money on both sides of the Islamic religious war, and that was undoubtedly oil money being spent up there on that mosque, so would their target be some billionaire sheikh, to be held for ransom to finance more terrorist acts?
On the drive home Max and Sugar Ray soon settled down into their usual traveling mode of eager expectancy. I talked to them, my voice soothing, but what I told them was what I thought Ross had gotten himself— and Doreen, and to some extent me—tied up with. Religious maniacs. Armed professional terrorists. A religious war with roots on the other side of the world. People whose language and ambitions and desires and fears and code of ethics Ross Ferguson couldn’t begin to understand. The lion tamer.
I drove in the front way, seeing nothing out of the ordinary. Would Ross’s friends put me back on their hit list now that I’d reneged on the agreement, or would they forget me now that I’d proved ineffective? I wouldn’t know for a while, would I?
The Volvo was gone. Max and Sugar Ray expressed their pleasure at the outing by racing madly off across the lawn, nipping at each other’s shoulders, and I went into the house to ask Robinson about the Volvo and if there was any other news.
There was. “Your friend Ross Ferguson telephoned.” It was just after five o’clock, and Robinson was seated in front of the television set in his little lounge in the ell of the kitchen, watching the early news. “About five minutes ago,” he said.
“He did, did he?” I was both surprised and annoyed; no good could come of another conversation with Ross.
“He said not to attempt to reach him back; he would try here every fifteen minutes until he caught you.”
“Okay. Anything else?”
“Miss Quinn telephoned about an hour ago. She, too, will try again. Nothing else of moment.” He wanted to get back to the lead story on the news.
I said, “The Volvo’s gone.”
“Ah, yes. Just after you and the police officers departed”—he wouldn’t call them “deputies,” as sounding too much like a western movie—“an examiner arrived from the insurance company. I studied his credentials with a great deal of care, I assure you.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
“And he was as claimed. He examined the auto inside and out, started the engine, drove it back and forth, and expressed astonishment that anyone inside the car at the moment of impact could still be alive.”
“Well, the impact was spread out over a period of time,” I said.
“In any event, he agreed that the vehicle’s useful life was at an end, and filled out several documents to that effect, one of which you will find on your desk. Before departure he informed me we need no longer keep the vehicle on the premises, and so I scanned the Yellow pages and found a person willing to take it away. A junk dealer, he’s called. He asked me how much money we wanted for the car, and I told him if it could be removed today, no money need change hands at all. Frankly, I had thought it would be up to us to pay for the removal. ’ ’ “So he came and no money changed hands.”
“Exactly. He, too, left a document, which you’ll find on your desk, and instructed me to inform the Department of Motor Vehicles by mail of the car’s final disposition. That I have not as yet done.”
Because his day’s work was finished, of course, except for dinner, and he wanted to be left alone with his TV set. “Thank you, Robinson,” I said. “I’ll be on the phone now for a while.” Not that he cared. With his remote control device he’d already turned the volume up. Various religious sects in Lebanon were killing one another.
The news is supposed to stay on the other side of the television screen, not break through into our private lives.
I left the kitchen and went through the house to my office, where the view out the windows over the lawn showed the late afternoon gathering itself for the rush of February’s twilight. The little clouds that had been roaming the sky all day like a strayed flock were now gathering together, massing into fat regiments, and the lawn and shrubbery looked colder than I knew them to be. Max and Sugar Ray galumphed by, without politics or religion. I sat at the desk and called Deputy Ken’s number.
He wasn’t there, so I left a message, and then took a chance that Oscar would still be in the office, and called him.
Still in the car, I meant; he was. “Oscar,” I said as the phone zizzed and brrrd in my ear, “do you in that car?”
“What?”
“WHERE ARE YOU, OSCAR?”
“Wait a minute. Sunset Boulevard!”
“Where on Sunset?”
“Just passing the Beverly Hills Hotel.”
“Heading which way?”
“What?”
“East or west?”
“Uhhh . . . toward the ocean.”
Toward me, in other words. “Oscar,” I yelled, “stop by a minute on your way!”
“What?”
“Come by for a drink!”
“That I heard!”
“Good.” I broke the connection, dialed Robinson in-house, and when he answered I said, “Put some noshes together; Oscar Cooperman is stopping by for a drink.”
“With his chauffeur?”
“Maybe he won’t be hungry,” I said, and the
regular phone rang, and I switched over to it, saying, “Hello?”
“Sam, I’m disappointed. I’m very disappointed.”
It was Ross, of course. I said, “Ross, I don’t want to start listing your mistakes because I wouldn’t have time for them all, but you shouldn’t have dragged Doreen back into it.”
“She came back of her own free will,” he said, “as she told those two Smokeys you brought around.”
“What are you calling for, Ross?”
“First, to tell you I’m disappointed in you.”
“Noted.”
“You’ve done your best to fuck up Fire Over Beverly Hills, but you failed, so although—”
“What was that?”
“The book. Oh, that’s right, I didn’t tell you before, that’s the working title. Fire Over Beverly Hills.”
“You have a working title.”
“Of course. You know that I always put some sort of title on every project right at the beginning so I can start a file, and if I’m discussing it with somebody, at least we have a name for what we’re talking about.”
Ross was dealing with murderers and terrorists and religious fanatics, he was in this thing several miles over his head, and I suppose it was a kind of instinctive defensive gesture to try to make it familiar and reasonable, to turn it into something he might be able to handle. So he’ll start a file, he’ll come up with a working title. He probably even had preliminary notes, in a folder.
In fact, come to think of it, the whole idea of turning this incident into a book might have been a defensive move, a way to survive the terror and uncertainty by having a plan, by having it all be aimed toward some purpose of his rather than theirs. He was a kind of kidnap victim himself, or hostage; in an equivalent position anyway, dependent on those people, coerced by them. It was very common for people in such a situation to work out complete though fanciful scenarios about their own plans, their reasons for going along, their relationship with their captors.
There was no point saying all this to Ross. He would almost certainly reject the idea, but if he accepted it, what good would it do? The moment for him to get out from under, I was beginning to realize, was gone. So I said, “All right, you’re disappointed in me because I put your project at risk. What was your other reason?’’ “To tell you I talked to the other people here. About you. I’m still your friend, Sam, despite everything. I hope you realize that.”
“Of course I do.”
“Well, the people here, they were very irritated by you, I hope you understand why.”
“And?”
“You do understand why?”
“I’m fucking up their book too.”
“You sure tried,” he said, ignoring my irony. “But I told them, and it’s true, now they’re safer than ever. The cops have been here, I showed them how the American law works; a man’s home really is his castle in this part of the world, it’ll take a lot to make the law come back and risk humiliation all over again.”
That was true, unfortunately. I could only hope my discovery that the new controversial mosque was Ross’s next-door neighbor would be enough for Ken—and his superiors, and a judge—to take some action, but I had my doubts. I said, “All right, Ross, I tried to end it and I failed. Now what?”
“Nothing,” he said, and the in-house red light on the phone lit up. “That’s the other reason I’m calling,” he went on. “There won’t be any efforts to shut you up or anything; you’re in the clear. All right? I argued your case, pal, believe it or not, I argued very hard for you.” I sighed. “I believe you, Ross. I even appreciate it. It can’t be easy, with a mob of religious nuts. Hold on a second.” I pushed the button and said to Robinson, “Is that Oscar?”
“Yes.”
“Give him a drink and some finger food. I’ll be right out.” And I switched back to Ross, saying, “Sorry, Robinson was buzzing me.” But there was nobody there; he’d hung up.
37
Oscar, looking pleased and prosperous, stood by the glass doors at the back of the living room, gazing north at the hills. A vodka-mar was in his right hand, a pate on a cracker in his left. He smiled across the room at me, saying, “I always find your place so restful.”
“That’s because it isn’t moving.”
His smile forgave me my frivolity, and he looked out the window again, saying, “What a spectacular view.” It is. The house was designed as much as possible to give discrete separate views from each section, with the best panorama saved for the living room. Facing north-northeast, with Japanese pines on the right to screen the garage and guest house while trellised vines on the left hide the pool area, the window wall of the living room opens onto a vista up into the Santa Monica Mountains. The tumbled bumpy hills alternate bare brown steeps with scrub-covered easier slopes, and only one or two barely visible rooftops up near the crests serve as a reminder of Man. Except for those, and the frequent white lines of vapor trail across the sky above the peaks, the scene is virtually what it was before the Europeans migrated west. “And only man is vile,” I said.
“For which, speaking as an attorney, I am grateful.” Oscar came reluctant but smiling away from the view, saying, “You’re not your sunny self today. That car attack still depressing you?”
“Probably.”
“Is that what you want to talk about?”
“Not exactly,” I said. “I want you to tell me about that mosque you were going to visit the other day.”
He frowned. “In connection with what?”
“It’s in Beverly Hills, isn’t it? Up a dead-end street? Looks like a golden flying saucer up at the top.”
“Very true,” he said. “Why?”
“I can’t remember the name of it.”
“Al-Gazel. Why?”
“You said there was a lot of extra security connected with the place. Why’s that?”
Oscar’s cheerful baby face was marred by a pout of exasperation. “Sam,” he said, “I do not answer any more of your questions until you answer at least one of mine.”
‘ ‘The people who knocked my car all over the road is what,” I told him. “I think they’re connected with the people Al-Gazel’s security is all about.”
Frowning, Oscar put his drink down on the coffee table near us, beside the plate of canapes and my as yet unopened bottle of San Pellegrino. “Is this a coincidence,” he asked, “or am / going to be batted around the freeway as well?”
“Oscar,” I said, “how many attorneys have been involved with the construction of Al-Gazel? From the beginning.”
“Architect’s plans through completion? Hundreds.”
“All from the Los Angeles area? Most of them tending to be in three-piece suits, male, smooth fellas, expensive? Not the kind you’ll find down around the Second Street tunnel?”
He laughed, and picked up his drink. “And one of them will also be your attorney. All right. Why do you think what you think?”
I sat on the sofa and busied myself with opening the San Pellegrino and pouring, while I figured out how to word what I wanted to say. “A friend of mine got himself mixed up with these people,” I said. “I think they plan to do something at that mosque next week.”
“Good luck to them,” Oscar said without alarm. Seating himself in the chair to my right, he said, “A water beetle couldn’t get into that place without reciting name, rank, and serial number.”
“My friend’s property adjoins theirs. That’s why these people forced him to cooperate.”
“Still won’t help.” Oscar studied the plate of nibbles and chose one. “Robinson is a wonder,” he commented.
“Why won’t it help?”
“I’m not going to tell you all the security they have around that place,” he said, “because in the first place I don’t know it all. But I do know the perimeter is one hundred percent safe.”
“Why? A fence? Guard dogs?”
“Microwave,” he said.
All I could think of was ovens. “I don’t follow
.”
“It’s like a more sophisticated electric eye,” he said, “but it’s a very low-level sound wave.”
“I’ve never heard of it.”
“No reason for you to. No reason for me to, either, except on this job. It can’t be used everywhere because some people claim it has bad side effects, everything from make your dog nervous to give your child birth defects, but it can be used in remote areas like the woods out behind the mosque, and that’s where they’re using it.”
“Okay.”
“My client, Mr. Catelli,” Oscar said, “got a letter at the beginning of the job saying his crew shouldn’t wander away back there because of the microwave alarm system. It’s sophisticated enough to tell the difference between a human being and a rabbit, and they’re using it with closed-circuit TV. If your friend leaves his own property, climbs over the fence, and takes a stroll toward the mosque, no alarms go off, nothing like that. But when he goes through the microwave field, several feet inside the fence, a TV monitor in the guard room at the mosque turns on, and there’s your friend on television.”
“Ah-hah.”
“At night it’s infrared.”
“The wonders of technology. Somebody tried to drive a truckload of dynamite up there last month, you know.” He looked mildly interested, not particularly surprised. “Did they? I hadn’t heard about that, but they’re doing a good job of staying out of the news. They’re trying to keep the whole thing as quiet as any twenty-seven-million-dollar mosque in Beverly Hills can be, so they don’t advertise attacks.”
“Twenty-seven million?”
“That gold dome, for one thing.”
“You’re telling me it’s gold, Oscar.”
“There isn’t an ounce of papier mache in the place, Sam.”
“All right,” I said. “But the security isn’t just because there’s valuable metal up there.”
“That’s right,” Oscar said, and sipped at his vodka-mar. “Some religious leader in the Middle East, I don’t remember the name, he announced about six months ago that Al-Gazel is a false mosque in a Satanic nation, and whoever destroys it gets Allah’s unlisted phone number.”